I am currently having a play with Alfresco Share as a possible option for an online collaboration tool for our teams. There is a nice feature in the site blog function that enables the posting of blog entries to both the team collaboration area and to an external blog. We have talked about the need for this sort of functionality in the past, so teams can maintain a blog which may be mostly for internal consumption, but with the ability to push some of the posts out to an external facing blog. It is great to see this feature implemented.
This entry was created on Alfresco Share running on my laptop, and was also pushed out to my external blog.
After an initial play around I am impressed with Alfresco and keen to have a detailed look at its document management features.
“The first course management system built on a social networking platform” they claim – but it is interesting to note that the key features of their new system that they highlight on their homepage are – manage attendance, upload documents and course material, and manage student grades – doesn’t sound awfully social constructivitist to me
I have just been looking at frameworks for reviewing IT systems in schools. We have used the ITIL version 3 framework as the basis of reviews in the tertiary sector, but I thought I would look at BECTA‘s adaption of ITIL for primary and secondary schools.
At first glance it appears to be based on the ITIL version 2 framework, which is ‘process’ driven. I like the version 3 approach which is instead ‘service’ driven. I think this was a sensible move on the part of ITIL. It is too easy for IT people to get focused on the processes and forget that the delivery of services is the key reason for IT to exist – and the version 3 framework helps to keep the focus on this. It is largely just wording, as the underlying processes of v3 are much the same as for version 2, but is still a worthwhile change in my view.
I wonder if BECTA are going to revise their framework to keep current with version 3 of ITIL. Must have better hunt through the above site to try and find out.
I was lucky enough to get a small contract in the middle east country of Bahrain a few weeks ago. It was my first time in the middle east, and it was a great experience. Click on the photo below to see a few snaps from the visit.
I was reading the South China Morning Post in a cafe in the City Gate mall in Hong Kong, as you do on a Saturday morning, and spotted an article about a great scheme to kick start the economy in the Fujian province. They were offering 10 bonus marks on the high school entrance exam for children whose parents spent more than $284K on property. For some reason there was a bit of an outcry against the scheme and they had to withdraw it. I think someone in the NZ ministry should pick this idea up and run with it
Here is a an idea – not as pointless as it first might seem – picture this, a classroom full of kids busy concentrating on the stimulating worksheet that you the teacher have just given them. Their headsets are attached and their ping pong balls are floating. By scanning the room the teacher can quickly identify who has stopped concentrating and dropped the ball so to speak. Perhaps this could be just the sort of 21st century tool for monitoring student achievement that the government is looking for
I have recently finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I really enjoyed it. There are some interesting thoughts in it for the education sector, like the fact that given 3 seconds of video of a lecturer, with no audio, a group of students came up with an identical evaluation of the lecturers effectiveness as a teacher as another group of students that did the evaluation after being taught for a semester. Universities could save thousands on their course evaluation processes by getting a group of random people to evaluate 3 second videos of the lecturing staff rather than analysing thousands of end of semester evaluation forms
With numerous examples Gladwell shows that with flashes of insight humans can make split second decisions that are sound and reliable – particularly when backed by years of experience in a particular field. But he notes that
“This insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out”
In some ways it backs up the ideas of extreme/agile programming which in a lot of ways operates around the split second hunches of the programmers as the cards are shuffled around the table, rather than the endless analysis and documentation of the waterfall methods.
If you are someone that feels you need to thoroughly research a topic and write a detailed bibliography in APA format before you can even think about making a sound decision then I suggest you read this book.
For a view of the type of wearble technology that is just around the corner the following TED talk is thought provoking.
If you were in a school thinking about investing heavily in SmartBoard technology you would have to seriously question the value for money you were going to get from it with this sort of thing just around the corner.
Imagine if every student in your class had one of these units!
